Cleanup crews on Friday scooped tons of dead fish from the surface of Marapendi lagoon, stagnant and polluted by sewage from high-rise apartment buildings on Rio's fashionable southwest side.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Cleanup crews on Friday scooped tons of dead fish from the surface of Marapendi lagoon, stagnant and polluted by sewage from high-rise apartment buildings on Rio's fashionable southwest side.
The dead fish were savelha, a coastal fish that grows up to 1 foot (30 centimeters) long and is highly sensitive to changes in its environment, said Rio de Janeiro state Authority for Rivers and Lagoons, or Serla.
Workers removed an estimated four tons of dead fish from the lagoon on Thursday, and the cleanup continued Friday.
Serla officials said the water of the lagoon was not sufficiently renewed by contact with the ocean, which leads to high concentration of algae that reduce the oxygen level in the water.
Marapendi is near Rio's upscale Barra da Tijuca district, which dumps untreated sewage into the lagoon.
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Pollution also has depleted the fish population in another lagoon, near Rio's trendy Ipanema beach. In 2000, a leaking sewer line killed an estimated 132 tons of fish in the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, mainly gray mullets, snooks and porgies. The next year, some 30 tons of fish washed up in the lagoon, and a reported 17 tons in 2002.
Source: Associated Press
